Migrants’ Rights

Photo by Irish Defence Forces/ Flickr January 17, 2018 By Naima Allcock, Fund Staff In 2016, 5,000 migrants died or disappeared while crossing the Mediterranean Sea in search of a safe and better life in Europe. These men, women, and children fled home for their own reasons, most commonly to escape war, poverty, political persecution, […]

They fled discrimination and violence in hopes of a better future for their families. They embarked upon an arduous trek for an unfamiliar land and an unknown fate. They took an enormous chance because their opportunities at home were so limited, their safety so precarious, their freedoms so constrained.
These words describe my family 100 years ago. They also describe millions of today’s migrants. But despite these similarities, their journeys and destinies look very different.

As the co-founder of Caminando Fronteras—a grassroots group supported by the Fund for Global Human Rights—Helena works to defend the dignity of some of the world’s most vulnerable people: migrants. Most of the people she works with have fled their homes in search of a better life, only to find themselves trapped in a kind of interminable limbo in North Africa, or nearly drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. It’s a commitment to humanity that can be traced back to Helena’s childhood in rural Spain, where she first encountered racism and discrimination, and was inspired to end it.

Over the past month, Burmese military forces have intensified their scorched-earth campaign against the Rohingya by burning villages, looting homes, killing residents, and forcing nearly half a million people in northern Rakhine State to flee their homes and seek refuge in neighboring Bangladesh. Several Fund grantees are working to expose the atrocities and support the displaced.

June 20, 2017 The Fund for Global Human Rights is committed to building support and fostering advocacy for the rights of migrants – individuals who are forcibly displaced, fleeing conflict, and seeking safety and opportunity. On World Refugee Day, we’re sharing two firsthand accounts from migrants who faced violence when they were fleeing their home […]

June 19, 2017 Last month, during the 2017 Sabir Festival of the Mediterranean Cultures in Syracuse, Sicily, migrants’ rights groups from the Euro-Mediterranean and Latin America came together to share their experiences and collaborate. With some activists traveling hundreds of miles to attend, the festival presented a rare opportunity for migrants’ rights organizations working in vastly different […]

While migration is a time old phenomenon, the last few years have seen a series of acute refugee crises erupt around the globe. Across Latin America, South East Asia, Africa and the Middle East, widespread conflict, political violence and chronic poverty are driving increasing numbers to risk everything in search of safer and better lives. The most visible of these crises is in the Euro-Mediterranean region, through which hundreds of thousands of migrants have fled since 2014.

Migrants leave their country to escape persecution, war, poverty, violation of basic human rights, and threats to their personal safety. After what in most cases is a dangerous journey, some of these individuals will be recognized as refugees; however, many others will be offered little to no legal protection. Migrants are consistently subjected to […]

Migrants sitting on the border fence between the Spanish enclave of Melilla and Morocco. Photo courtesy of José Palazon. December 18, 2016 Written by Chloée Ponchelet Chloée Ponchelet is the Fund’s Program Officer for Migrants’ Rights, overseeing the Fund’s initiative to support activists that document and expose the grim reality facing migrants in transit, and advocate […]

Migrants in the woods of Nador, Morocco learning about their rights as they make their way north. Faces blurred to protect identities. December 17, 2016 Written by Chloée Ponchelet Chloée Ponchelet is the Fund’s Program Officer for Migrants’ Rights, overseeing the Fund’s initiative to support activists that document and expose the grim reality facing migrants […]